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Review:

magnolia_magic says:Oh Nadia. I'm literally staring at my laptop with my hand over my mouth, just so you can have a mental picture of my reaction. I have a feeling I'll still be processing this one for a while.

What a haunting piece! I absolutely love your description of Mrs. Nott's descent. It's subtle at first, and then it just gets so horrifying. Which, from what I know of schizophrenia, makes perfect sense. I'm honestly struggling to find ways to praise you for your style here. I love that you used really sparse lines in most places, and made powerful statements in only a few words. Like this one:

"You released a bitter laugh. It was funny the way things worked."

^This is one of my favorite parts, because it just packs such an emotional punch. I tend to ramble, and so I always love to find authors who can get such power across with one simple line. Love it, love it!

Personally, I am not a fan of second person. I'm not even sure what it is that irks me about it, but it's definitely not my preferred style. But objectively, I think you did a really good job with the second person in this piece. And for people who really like that particular style (and there are a lot of those people), I think your use of it will be really impressive :)

Just curious: how did you decide to use Theodore as your narrator? He's such a minor character and I see a lot of authors fleshing him out a lot in their stories. What is it about him that made you want to write this? I'd love to know! I do think it was a good decision to use such a minor character, because it allowed us to dive into the story without any preconceived ideas about the narrator. And now that I think about it, I'm not sure I can think of a better minor character you could have chosen. I like the fact that it was a Slytherin character; the fact that this happened in a pureblood household adds an air of secrecy and eeriness to it that I loved.

Gahh, I'm still reeling! I wish I could come up with more words, but rest assured that I really loved reading this piece, and it's very impactful and powerful. You really did a wonderful job with it! So glad I got to tag you, Nadia, it was about time I checked out some of your amazing work :)

--Maggie

Author's Response: Hi Maggie! Sorry it's taken me a week to come over and respond to this magnificent review. I was really excited to see that you'd tagged me!

Wow, thank you so much. It was difficult to stop myself from going all out on Edith, but I wanted her descend into madness to be as realistic as possible. I had some help from Amanda and she really described it amazingly. Google helped tons too. ;)

Aw, you liked that? I really love when people point out lines they liked, because it makes me feel all mighty and clever. Sometimes I fear my writings too.. cliche or something, if that makes sense.

I've really admired second person, only because I feel like it's so much more thrilling to read. I'm glad you were flexible to this piece, and that you enjoyed it in this. That means a lot.

I always wanted to issue a challenge over at the forums, where you would take something that's been mentioned -- told to us -- and *show* it to us, if that makes sense. I was planning on issuing it, and Theo was a prompt for it, and then the Unexpected Voice challenge came out and I couldn't really do that any more :P I didn't make the deadline, but I did manage to finish. I really came to love him in this, because he seems like a great person in my eyes. I really hope I can write about him soon again. I'm so glad you liked him, because I like him too, a lot.

No , no, there is no need for more words! Let me assure you my face is positively burning! Thank you so much for all this praise, because it means so much. I'm so happy that you enjoyed this piece and that it managed to have such a great impact. Thank you, thank you! You are seriously much too kind.